Drowsy

My step-father's parents were very old and very southern. They treated me as if they'd rocked me to sleep as an infant by the living room fireplace. I'm nine, and the fireplace crackles and it's night and winter and cold outside and the wind shrieks through the trees like the red-skinned, pitch-forked devils in old cartoons, and even though I feel like a stranger, that I don't belong in this house, my eyes become heavy and I slowly fall asleep to the spit and pop of fresh wood burning.